What Might Have Been Read Online Free PDF Page A

his brain. Each and every time he closed his eyes, memories of the past surfaced. The darkening of her eyes with passion. The breathy sound she made when she came. He’d wondered if she’d still do that.
    And then he’d wondered if his brother had heard the same sound.
    He’d spent the past hour vacillating between pounding arousal and rushing resentment.
    And here he’d thought he’d come to terms with the situation years ago. Not as if he could do anything about it now. The past was done and his brother was dead. End of story.
    But something in him said it was unfinished. They were unfinished.
    He heard the creak of the floorboards outside his door. The soft and slow tread of feet against worn wood.
    He knew who it was. There were only two other people in this house and Gran wasn’t strong enough to walk with that quiet grace.
    Maybe that’s why he was here. Now. So they could finish this. So that he could truly move on.
    The moan of a stair galvanized him and before he realized what he was doing he was out of bed.
    He pulled on a pair of worn jeans he’d draped across the footboard, not bothering to do up the snap as he slipped into the hallway.
    A single light burned from the kitchen, illuminating the stairs and the house below in a weak, watered-down light. He couldn’t see her but he could hear the slap of the front door as it closed.
    Curiosity and the remnants of a desire he didn’t want had him following her.
    As he watched, she slipped into the orchard at the edge of the deep green lawn. Even here, peach trees, the reason for their existence were always just steps awayfrom the front door, a reminder of the pressure of who and what he was.
    A flash of the memory he’d had earlier in the day returned, overlaying the past with the present in a way that left him shaken and a bit disoriented.
    This time she didn’t run through the trees with happiness and abandon. Instead, she trailed her hand slowly across one trunk, the pull of the bark almost holding on to her hand, unwilling to let it go, until she was reaching for another. As if she was unable to continue walking if she wasn’t touching at least one. She moved, dreamlike from tree to tree, weaving in and out of them in a figure-eight pattern that played peekaboo with his line of sight.
    Time seemed to unravel, the years and the hurt and the guilt and the anger melting away as she ghosted down the path ahead of him.
    He could go back again and start over. The question was, would he do things differently?
    He didn’t know.
    For some reason he was drawn to watch her in silence, staying back several yards, moving in and out of the shadows himself to stay hidden. There was something about her, about the tilt of her shoulders and her heavy footsteps that held him back.
    She didn’t want company, certainly not his, and he had no idea what to say to her anyway. There’d been a time he would have understood immediately what she was thinking, what she needed. Not anymore.
    Part of him missed the feeling of knowing someone almost as well as he knew himself. He’d shared it withLogan, until they’d begun to grow apart. He’d shared it with Ainsley.
    She stopped in the middle of the orchard, her hand resting lightly against the rough trunk of the tree. She looked up through the canopy above, reaching on tiptoe to pull a round orb of fruit from a limb.
    He expected her to rub the dirt from it and take a huge bite. He remembered the immediate burst of juice and fruit in his mouth when he’d eaten a ripe peach straight from the tree as a child. He could almost feel the cool roll of the juices down the back of his throat, sweet and sticky on his fingers.
    His own mouth began to water. But she didn’t eat it. Instead, she wrapped it tight in the center of her two hands, rubbing it back and forth across her palms as if to caress the soft downy skin.
    The gesture was almost absent, probably something